Increasing numbers of different wireless technologies and networks continue to emerge, oftentimes in overlapping coverage areas. Thus, wireless heterogeneous networks are becoming more common. For example, networks ranging from wireless local area networks (WLANs), to wireless wide area networks (WWANs), to wireless personal area networks (WPANs), and cellular communication systems may co-exist in geographical areas and consequently have overlapping coverage areas.
A common problem with some WWAN networks is the ability to transmit and receive data at a high enough rate as desired. As more applications increase in complexity and ability, e.g., multimedia broadcasting, the need to transmit and receive data at higher speeds correspondingly increases. The available bandwidth for applications at a client node over a WWAN link may be limited by the performance on the link, or inhibited by platform constraints to process traffic received over the WWAN link at the client node.
Although heterogeneous networks with overlapping wireless technologies may introduce difficulties for each other, such as interference, the heterogeneous nature of the networks can be used to overcome some problems, such as WWAN link bandwidth limitations, as well.